


wants unvoiced

by Artemis1000



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: AU: Tevinter Won, Alternate Universe - Tevinter Imperium, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-09-06 22:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20298835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: In a Kirkwall that is still the City of Chains, Marian Hawke is openly a mage but nevertheless struggling to make ends meet as a Fereldan refugee. Life would be less complicated if Athenril didn't keep partnering her with Fenris, the runaway slave from Minrathous who tries so hard to hold on to his suspicion, while she holds on to her distance. For there is no place in this world where they can both be free.





	wants unvoiced

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RoseWithAllHerThorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseWithAllHerThorns/gifts).

The first time Hawke did a job with Fenris, he tried to skewer her on his greatsword as soon as she showed a flicker of magic.

It took four months of Athenril sending them out together time and again until she truly understood why.

“Seems like a waste of a perfectly handsome elf,” Hawke told the elven warrior when he confessed what she had come to suspect – that he was an escaped slave – and explained what she hadn’t expected – that his master was hunting him not so much for the shame he had brought him as for the lyrium he would like to rip from his corpse. There were many other things she could have said but if she’d learned one thing over these months, it was that he wouldn’t appreciate her pity.

He laughed and that was the moment she knew she was screwed – for this was the wrong time, wrong place, wrong life.

The City of Chains didn’t write romantic fairy tales between mages and elven slaves, the only stories this city was any good at were tragedies.

Kirkwall was known for being a trading hub in the Free Marches, known for shipping goods as varied as cheese and people to every corner of the known world. Nowhere was it more obvious than at the Gallows that Kirkwall had earned its reputation fair and square.

Hawke wore a forbidding scowl as she strode along the bustling docks of the Gallows, her robes and mage staff the only reason she was allowed to walk undeterred where strangers were not welcome. Never mind that she was only here because she had no choice, as she had needed to get her family’s immigration papers signed by the port authority that had first registered them upon their arrival. Never mind that passing through the Gallows once had been once too often.

Curious in spite of her discomfort, she lingered by a dock which was particularly busy. Grimy, burly workers were unloading crates of wine and bolts of richly colored silk from a galley whose hull bore the telltale scorch marks of pirate fireballs.

A clamor further down the docks averted her attention with loud, barking voices, soon followed by the snap of a whip smacking on the white stone of the Gallows. Soon, she could spy a line of slaves chained up, being herded towards a daunting four-mast ship moored at the far end of the Gallows. There were humans and Qunari amongst the slaves, though most were elves as it always was. Most of their faces were eerily blank but they still reminded her of the statues looming over the main courtyard of the Gallows, where Hawke had been crammed along with the other Blight refugees when she first arrived at Kirkwall.

Kirkwall, she knew, had been built on the bones of slaves in the old not-so-glorious days of the Tevinter Imperium. It was a truth she had always known, she had learned it in history class, yet she had not truly understood it until the Blight forced her family to return to her mother’s home town. Growing up in rural Ferelden, the ugly realities of the slave trade and even the power of mages had felt like part of a different world which didn’t pertain much to her life.

The Hawkes were respected in Lothering but she had never thought much about the reason why. Her sister and she contributed their magical skill to the community just as their father had done before, of course they would be respected for it. When Carver voiced his frustration, she had been quick to dismiss it as a younger brother’s frustration at being unable to catch up to his older sibling.

In Kirkwall, there could be no mistaking that people looked at her differently when she walked the streets in her robes than when she slipped into the ratty old tunics and breeches Carver had outgrown, and it had nothing to do with said ratty state of these clothes.

In Kirkwall, there were eyes on you when you were a mage.

Hawke had decided very quickly that she didn’t like that many eyes on her. Kirkwall wasn’t as cutthroat as Tevinter proper and she was a mere Laetan, the lowest class of mages, but a mage of her skill still lived longer if she stayed unnoticed.

On the docks, the procession of slaves continued, a glaring reminder of the price for slipping up in Kirkwall.

Hawke’s hands balled into fists and her eyes squeezed shut for just a moment before she turned her back on the scene.

All her childhood long, her mother had told her of Kirkwall’s white streets, shining in the sunlight like marble. Now that she walked these white streets, she only yearned for the dirt paths of Lothering.

Away from the Gallows, Kirkwall was no different than any other urban center and most of all one thing: hopelessly overcrowded.

Hawke slipped through the crowd in Lowtown not quite with ease but with determination, which amounted to the same thing as soon as elbows got involved.

Ever since the arrival of the refugees fleeing the Blight, already crowded Kirkwall had turned into a veritable wasp’s nest rife with crime, suffering and a stench that became near unbearable in summer. Hawke was in no position to verify the truth of the rumor, but word had it that even Magister Severinus avoided the city he ruled during the hottest summer months.

Without giving it a second glance, Hawke passed by the humble house she shared with mother, Carver and Uncle Gamlen. It was a slightly nicer house than he had occupied before the arrival of his mage niece but at the end of the day, it was still a Lowtown hovel.

In Lothering, the Hawke family had been the only mages around. Between Bethany being the town’s healer and her and Carver with the guard, they had lived in modest wealth or what passed for it in such a humble place. Here in Kirkwall, she was just one more refugee mage without lineage, wealth or connections. The Amells had been respectable once, but being Soporati respect only lasted as long as the money did. Hawke knew she had five magical cousins which had technically raised the family into the Laetan class but Kirkwall was a cutthroat place to families newly raised to magic. Uncle Gamlen didn’t like to speak of it, all she knew was that her cousins were scattered across Thedas and the estate Mother remembered so fondly now held the offices of a slave-trading company.

She slipped into ever narrower streets and then backstreets until she was walking in twilight in the middle of the day.

Soon she was disappearing down one of the well-hidden manholes leading to the tunnels and sewers underneath the city, a maze-like world of their own.

For as long as Kirkwall existed, these sewers had been the refuge of escaped slaves and the most desperate of free men but in these days of the Blight, even Darktown was running out of seedy hidey holes for all those who were hungry but not yet hungry enough to sell themselves.

Hawke walked with purpose, sending cutpurses shrinking back with a withering glare and pointedly letting flames dance over her fingertips when she caught the attention of those who looked like they would rather cut throats than purses.

Deeper she went, ever deeper, down yet another manhole, through another narrow tunnel holding rotting carcasses both human and spider – the latter of which, picked clean. The spiders had learned quickly that people, once hungry enough, would hunt what was trying to hunt them. It had been different before the mage refugees brought with them glyphs, protective spells and healing that, albeit often basic, didn’t rely on potions nobody down here could afford.

Hawke’s thoughts had just turned from glyphs and spiders to whether making more of the tunnels safe to traverse wouldn’t just bring the guard down here when she reached the hole in the wall Fenris had claimed for himself.

It was just one room, a makeshift bed and table and enough empty wine bottles scattered on the floor to make crossing the room a security hazard.

Fenris didn’t greet her warmly, he never did. There would be glares and sullen looks, his greatsword not leaving his back even – especially – when it was just the two of them. It was always like this between them until business forced them to turn their animosity on a shared enemy – but even then the snarls never quite faded.

“What do you want?” Fenris asked, arms crossed over his chest and a scowl firmly in place. He stood at the far end of the room, half in shadows in the dim light of the flickering oil lamps.

Hawke grinned, showing too many teeth for it to be called a smile. Magic hummed through her and mingled with the prickle she always felt under Fenris’s intense eyes. It left her flushed and uncomfortably aware of her own skin. She shifted, unwilling to let her grin waver. “Can’t a girl visit her best friend?”

He scoffed. “We aren’t friends.”

“Kill buddies then?” she prodded, undeterred.

He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He never much liked to be reminded that he worked best with a mage, which was exactly why Hawke liked to remind him of it. It was petty and maybe it was beneath her but it felt satisfying anyway after all the petty jibes he had flung into her face. “What do you want, Hawke?”

_You_. It was at the tip of her tongue. She swallowed it down, of course, gritting her teeth until the urge had passed. She still wondered sometimes if he knew. She would never speak the words aloud, not even in the most innocent, platonic sense. They weren’t the kind of colleagues who went for drinks and heart-to-hearts, much as she might have yearned.

“We have a new job,” she said, matching his brusque tone with her own. “Athenril wants us protecting a lyrium transport.”

Fenris shifted, going from lazily alert to full alert. “I see. When?”

It was easy to fall into talking business, debating the best ways in which they could protect the transport both from the law and rival smugglers. They worked well together, they had done so even when they could barely speak a civil word to another. These days, they managed that - for a while, anyway.

“I can’t wait to see what new magical atrocities we are going to witness,” Fenris sneered as soon as she mentioned rumors of the Carta having recruited new blood mages and there it was, the predictable end to today’s truce.

Hawke stiffened, proverbial hackles raising as they always did. It was easier to get angry than to think about how much it hurt. “Don’t start,” she snapped as she took a step towards him.

“Or what?” Fenris snapped right back, mirroring her step for one of his own. “You will see me put back in chains?”

“If you thought that of me you wouldn’t be standing here and arguing with me!”

It was all she clung to when their arguments got the most hurtful. Fenris would accuse her of the most terrible things and leap at every chance to see betrayal but he had yet to walk out of her life. He just wouldn’t let her play a part in his and even with as little as she knew about his life before, she couldn’t blame him for his suspicion.

It just hurt all the same.

Fenris scrutinized her, his green eyes impossible to read. Hawke found herself holding her breath, unwilling to disturb whatever inner battle he seemed to be fighting. In the end, he grunted in annoyance and shook his head. “I don’t know why I am.”

Hawke nodded, swallowing down some irrational disappointment. “Fair enough. Just be there for the job.”

She didn’t know why she kept hoping, she thought morosely as she made her way home. Kirkwall was no place for fairy tales.

There were times when Hawke didn’t know if Fenris liked her at all, never mind as more than a battle companion. He certainly never said so.

Then there were times when she knew better than to doubt.

It was when they fought and he guarded her more fiercely than any other warrior had ever done, always aware of her even when she was at the far end of the battlefield. The way he would turn into a mad flurry of flashing blade and glowing markings when she cried out in pain, distress showing plainly on his face until he reached her side. How he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking back, with such pained longing mixed with anger. How gentle he was when he dabbed elfroot tincture onto her wounds with hands still red with the blood of their enemies.

At other times, it felt wrong to hold any such feelings for him at all. When he was at his angriest, his most frustrated with the magic that had cost him so much, when he was lashing out at her in bitterness. She didn’t hold it against him, she was the only mage he could safely vent to, but he had lost too much to it already, she had no right to be asking more of him.

She wanted more anyway.

There were times when she wondered if he was right, and she was no different than the mages he hated.

Hawke had never taken to blood magic. It was a disadvantage when so many other mages had, but as she had told Fenris once, _there’s nothing wrong with using your own blood but once you start, it’s a slippery slope. It would be stupid. I try to avoid stupid mistakes. _It could have been a touching moment, if not for Carver piping up,_ “since when?”_

Now, facing a dozen slavers in some deserted part of the docks, with two of them summoning shades faster than Fenris could cut them down, she was wondering if her hesitation had been her stupidest mistake – one that could cost them both their lives, that was.

They fought in their familiar pattern, Fenris in melee while Hawke switched off between protecting him and firing off her own elemental spells and Force magic. They were bleeding and running out of healing potions, and even if Hawke had studied healing she wouldn’t have had the mana to spare.

By the time it was over, Fenris was covered in blood which was at least half his own, Hawke would guess, and he was wobbling on his feet as he staggered towards her, his greatsword dragging behind him.

Hawke herself was already on the ground in a graceless sprawl, pressing her hands against the deep cut in her boiled leather chest piece and the gaping, bleeding wound beneath.

“Just caught my ribs,” she ground out, trying for a grin she didn’t feel, “any lower and I’d be a goner.” She winced at the truth of it, even as she forced a chuckle through the pain. The basic potions they carried wouldn’t have helped if she was spilling out her guts; nothing short of Bethany’s gift in healing would have given her a fighting chance.

She looked up, forcing the haze of exhaustion and blood loss to clear enough that she could at least try and catalog Fenris’s injuries. After a moment, she gave up and asked, “Are you hurt?” Although she knew he was limping, he was covered in too much blood and gore to see where exactly he was wounded.

Fenris knelt in front of her. More like, he dropped to his knees in front of her and barely stifled a yell of pain as the force of it jolted through whatever injuries he had. “I will survive.”

That was a yes, Hawke translated for herself. She nodded, too exhausted and in too much pain to argue. “We have to get out of here before the City Guard arrives.”

Fenris’s face, already tense and pained, crumbled. “You killed them. Because of me.”

Hawke blinked at him. “Of course I did.”

He growled, and then he was reaching for her, the tips of his bloodied gauntlets barely brushing the leather of her shoulders before he yanked his hands away. “You broke the law for me.”

She grinned cockily. Or tried to, anyway. Her vision kept blurring and she was pretty sure this, just like the killer headache, was the result of the nasty blow she had taken with a war hammer. If her shielding spell had given way a moment sooner, her skull would be splattered all over the docks now. She didn’t have much grinning left in her. “We break the law all the time. It’s what smugglers do.”

A louder growl and he leaned forward, reaching for her again. This time, he didn’t release her shoulders, he held on tight and made as if to shake her before he caught himself at her wince and remembered not to aggravate her injuries. He ended up just holding her, uncomfortably comfortably close.

“Stop turning everything into a joke! You know this is different.” He spat in disgust and nearly recoiled from her. Dimly, Hawke found herself admiring that he still had the energy for such emotion. She wanted a nap. Even right here looked good. “You know the punishment for aiding an escaped slave.”

“Death.” This time, she managed a smile.

“Fasta vass!” He fell into a truly impressive stream of swears, which all blurred together in Hawke’s ever fuzzier mind.

It had to be the mana loss or the blood loss or maybe some kind of combination of both, or maybe it was just the way Fenris looked so utterly pained on her behalf when it had been him who barely escaped recapture and a punishment worse than death. “If you’re ever going to kiss me,” she blurted out, “now would be the time.”

Fenris stared at her, his green eyes impossibly wide.

Hawke’s belly turned to ice. She licked her lips and came away tasting blood. Big surprise. “I… It wasn’t…”

A moment later there were bloodied lips pressed against her own. She made a little startled noise which turned into a whine for more before the sound had even faded and he was all too eager to comply. Her split lip stung and he tasted of blood, too, but none of that mattered as they lost themselves in a kiss Hawke had fantasized about for months.

When they came up for air, his gauntleted hand was cradling her cheek, undoubtedly leaving more scratches. She leaned into the touch anyway.

“Does that mean you aren’t angry with me anymore for helping you?” she murmured, the grin she wore now lazily curling the corners of her mouth upwards.

“I should be angrier.”

Her smile widened. Yet, as lovely as this was, the world was getting really dark at the edges and increasingly fuzzy. Hawke frowned. “Fenris?” she slurred. “I think I’m going to pass out now.”

The last thought she had was that at least Carver wasn’t here to see her fainting in the arms of her beloved like one of these Randy Dowager heroines.

Hawke awoke to the distinct smell of the sewers and far less pain than she ought to be in. When she shifted, her body was stiff but in a way that spoke of healing, and the aftertaste of strong healing potions clung to the roof of her mouth.

“A fight, a kiss, and potions. I got lucky, you give the full Kirkwall gentleman’s treatment,” she muttered, aching head still buried in the lumpy straw mattress for want of a pillow.

It was only in the aftermath of having said it that she realized, maybe Fenris would have been happier to ignore what had happened between them.

She laid there, perfectly still, eyes still closed, dreading to look at him and read disgust on his face.

“So you are okay.” Fenris’s gravelly voice, very solemn but devoid of disgust, made her look up. He was sitting on the crate that served as a chair, his armor laid out around him in pieces for scrubbing. She had never seen him without before. Somehow, he didn’t look any less dangerous in a loose shirt and slacks, just a little bit more approachable. “I was concerned.”

She grunted in pain as she sat up. “You were injured worse than I. You should be resting, too.”

Fenris’s face darkened. “I have to be prepared if they return.”

“Good point.” She forced herself to her feet and padded over to his side. Her hand hovered for a moment, then for another before it gingerly settled on Fenris’s shoulder. He was tense but he didn’t tense further under her touch. “So. What do we do?”

The hand scrubbing a gauntlet stilled. “You don’t do anything.” He didn’t meet her eyes.

“Fat chance.”

“People do stupid things in the aftermath of escaping certain death.” Fenris’s fingers tightened around the bloodied cloth. “You don’t have to throw your life away over a single kiss.”

Silence, broken only by their breathing. She was starting to feel cold again, like at the docks when she thought he would turn away in disgust.

“You underestimate me. I do stupid things all the time.”

Fenris laughed, a hacked-off, husky sound that shouldn’t have chased away the cold so easily and yet here she was, smiling, feeling a flutter of wild hope. Recalling their kiss, too, and wondering what he would do if she kissed him again. But she had made her move, Hawke reminded herself. It had to be his now. Her resolve still stood; she wouldn’t chase if she couldn’t be sure it was wanted.

“Listen, Fenris,” she said, her tone brisk now and devoid of all humor. “I’m going to help you either way. We’re in this together. No strings. No price.”

“I know.” He sighed. “If I ever made you doubt that, I apologize.” He tilted his head back and his fingers released their death grip on the bloodied cleaning cloth. He reached for her, his hand on the back of her neck.

They met halfway between him standing up and her leaning down.

Their second kiss was better than the first, mostly because Hawke wasn’t in the process of passing out this time. Also because she ended up on Fenris’s lap, soaking up as much of his heat and his smell and the feel of bare skin under her fingers as their aching, battered bodies permitted.

A third kiss gave way to a fourth and she stopped counting.

She couldn’t wait for when they were less in pain and sore, and had the strength for more than kisses.

In the end, it was Fenris who pulled them out of the haze they had fallen into, leaning his forehead against Hawke’s and sighing heavily. “I still say you should go,” he said quietly. “There is no place for us. At least one of us will always be hunted or put in chains.”

Hawke met his eyes, not in challenge but unflinching nevertheless. She was done running, she reminded herself. That was why she was here. The only question that remained was whether Fenris felt the same way. “So,” she said, her fingers gentle as they combed through the hair at the back of his neck. “Is that a no?”

He scowled, the elven bump of his nose becoming more pronounced in the process. Whenever that had happened in the past, Hawke had felt the irreverent urge to lean in and kiss it. It could easily have ended with a fist around her heart so she had never given in. She didn’t now, since she knew it would irritate him to think she was making light of such a serious matter. It still left her giddy to think she might get away with it.

“It’s not a no. I’m reminding you of the realities we live in.”

“I know the realities.” She let a moment of heavy silence pass between them. “And I know what I want.”

He was the one to look away first, a grimace that looked almost pained to Hawke’s eyes flickering over his face. “It never ends well when mages want things,” he intoned darkly.

She winced. She would have liked to call it a low blow but he wasn’t wrong. Few mages said yes to a demon out of malice; they did it out of desperation – desperation like, say, being chased to the ends of Thedas by a magister’s relentless hunters. There was no place safe for both of them, no place which would refuse to acknowledge Danarius’s claim on Fenris while acknowledging her own right to live free.

“I have no answers,” she admitted, her voice as quiet and earnest as his had been. “All I know is I’m exactly where I want to be.”

When Fenris’s hand cupped her cheek this time, there was no gauntlet to prick her. Just his touch, incredibly gentle as if she were something delicate and could not smash a man into the ground with such force that every bone in his body shattered. But she could, Hawke reminded herself, and she knew he knew it, too. She wasn’t too frightened to walk this path with him, wherever it may lead them. If only he wanted to walk it with her.

He still regarded her solemnly. She couldn’t even begin to guess what he was thinking. He exhaled and what tension had built up again left him. “So am I,” he said and kissed her again.

Neither of them tasted of blood this time. Hawke decided to take it for a fortuitous omen.


End file.
